Every Monday night, Bon Appétit editor in chief Adam Rapoport gives us a peek inside his brain by taking over our newsletter. He shares recipes he's been cooking, restaurants he's been eating at, and more. It gets better: If you sign up for our newsletter, you'll get this letter before everyone else.
Like everyone else this past month, I’ve spent a lot of time making beans. Which sounds simple enough. But for whatever reason, I’ve never made them well. Mine always seem to lack flavor, or they fall apart, or I can never figure out whether they are overdone or underdone. Simple has never been simple for me.
But then I watched Carla Music’s brothy bean video and I realized two things. 1) The reason my beans lacked flavor is because I was woefully under seasoning them (hello salt and fat). 2) My beans weren’t brothy enough.
The former point is pretty straight ahead—the more salt and fat you add to something, the more depth of flavor it will take on. But that latter point had never even occurred to me. In the past, I had simmered and simmered my beans until they took on a stewed, almost refried-like consistency. The notion of cooking them at low heat in an abundance of water wasn’t something I had tried. They would just end up too watery, right?
Well, not if you do like Carla and chef Patch Troffer, who inspired Carla’s bean technique. In the beginning of the cooking process, they coddle the beans with salt and olive oil (or whatever leftover fat you have jarred in your fridge), casting aside that age-old advice about waiting until after the beans are cooked before salting them. Except they do that too. When the beans are cooked, they add more salt and fat to taste.
The result is not only delicious, flavorful (pork-free) beans, but broth as rich and satisfying as any soup. The last batch I made yielded an extra quart of broth, in addition to the quart of beans I stowed in the fridge.
One day for lunch, I heated a pot of the broth, added some leftover farro to it, and topped it with grated parm, chopped parsley, and a drizzle of extra virgin. It was exactly what I needed on a damp, cold, not-quite-spring afternoon. Another day, I heated some broth and beans together and ladled them into a small bowl to accompany two fried eggs and a warmed tortilla and plenty of hot sauce. Breakfast for lunch.
And one day around 3 p.m., when I was tempted to reach for a bag of tortilla chips, I drank some hot bean broth straight from a coffee mug. I felt like one of those wellness folks who extol the virtues of bone broth. Except I’m preaching my own kind of broth—no bones about it.
